Gurugram gangrape: ACP reveals new details, arrested man confesses

Assistant Commissioner of Police Manish Sehgal has revealed to Catch that one arrest has been made for the gangrape of a 23-year-old woman in Gurugram. The arrest has been made from Manesar, and the individual has confessed to the crime.

Sehgal also revealed that all three assaulters are from a village in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district, though two of them are still at large. He expressed confidence that these men would be nabbed within 24 hours, in addition to the absconding driver of the vehicle used in the crime.

The National Commission of Women has taken suo motu cognisance of the case, and has asked the police for an Action Taken Report (ATR). The commission hasn't sent any members on the ground yet.

Police version of events

According to Sehgal, on the night of 29 May, the woman, while travelling from Manesar to Gurugram with an infant daughter, was initially molested by three men, who were allegedly drunk. The incident occurred on board a Tata Ace Mini vehicle, used for public transportation. The woman was then gangraped by these men at an abandoned construction site. She was travelling to Khanda Road in Gurugram, where her in-laws live.

The woman's nine-month-old infant died when the assaulters smothered the child in the vehicle – the post mortem has found the cause of death to be asphyxia (oxygen deprivation).

Contrary to media reports, Sehgal confirmed that the child was left on a road divider near the construction site, and that the woman went back for the child after the assaulters left her.

PTI reported that the woman then travelled with her dead child to a hospital in Gurugram, and even travelled to Delhi by Metro to seek another consultation when the first revealed that her child was dead.

Sehgal said: “We are verifying these details, but the woman has claimed to have travelled by Metro to Delhi with her child after the assault.”

The woman, who initially filed her complaint on 30 May, did not reveal to the police until 3 June that she was also gangraped. The FIR was filed the same day. Her initial complaint was the death of child due to a scuffle with three men.

She later revealed to the police that she first took a lift from a truck, but got off as she was uncomfortable with the driver, who, she claims, also tried to touch her inappropriately. She then stopped the autorickshaw in which the three men attacked her, smothered her baby when it cried, and then gangraped her at a nearby construction site.

This is the third incident of gangrape reported in Haryana in the month of May. On 9 May, a 23-year-old woman was brutally gangraped and murdered; her mutilated body was later found at a deserted plot in Rohtak. Just a few days later, on 13 May, a 22-year-old woman was kidnapped and gangraped in a moving car in Gurugram, and thrown on a road in Delhi.